dengue

In Malaysia, most people are aware of the Aedes mosquito spreading dengue. It is worth a mention because this (mainly) urban disease has reared its ugly head here – on Pantai Hill Orchard, Seremban

In 2014 and 2015 two families living on different parts of Pantai Hill contracted dengue. Although there were no deaths, we are very concerned with its presence here and would like to alert visitors to Pantai Hill of this problem.

We associate the presence of dengue to the proliferation of trash and indiscriminate dumping of building materials from visitors, workers and increased construction activities on Pantai Hill. This behaviour by Pantai Hill contractors and workers needs to be urgently addressed, before more dengue cases happen on the hill.

The Star newspaper recently published an article on dengue by Dr. Milton Lum – here are its salient points:

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), dengue is the fastest spreading mosquito-bourne viral disease in the world. Its spread has been alarming with an increase from nine affected countries in 1970 to more than 100 countries today.

A study by Brady et al in 2012 estimated that 3.9 billion people in 128 countries are at risk of infection. The surge in dengue has been most marked in Asia which accounts for 75% of the world’s population, with an estimated 1.8 billion people at risk of dengue.

Rapid urbanisation has resulted in millions of people moving to the cities,with insuficient housing and basic infrastructure such as water supply, sewer and waste management, providing ideal conditionsfor the breeding of mosquitoes and dengue transmission.

The description below is highly correlated to what is happening on Pantai Hill.

Negative habits like littering, illegal dumping of garbage, apathy, poor environmental cleanliness and lack of adherence to guidelines in construction sites have to be addressed.